DocsBarcelona 2010 home

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An all-inclusive line-up in a documentary film festival is not entertaining to the viewer. Happily, DocsBarcelona is one event that has professionally streamlined its programme. To prove this point, this edition kicks off with a film that American cable networks were clamouring for recently and which was at last month’s Sundance festival. Pecados de mi padre (Sins of my father) is Nicolas Entel’s gripping portrait of Pablo Escobar, the infamous boss of Colombia’s Medellin drug cartel.

Elsewhere, eight sections include those aimed at children and teenagers. Of the others, ‘Panorama’ deals with recent quality material, including quirky Finnish film Freetime Machos, following the sporting and domestic highs and lows of a Finnish rugby team, while Scottish film The Edge of Dreaming pits hard-edge northern realism against spiritualism. ‘Catalan Day’ is a nod to local productions, such as Ventura Durall’s devastating El Perdón (The Forgiveness), which tells the story of paranoid schizophrenic Andrés Rabadán, who was sectioned in a secure psychiatric unit after killing his father with a crossbow. The festival bows out with El Último Aplauso (The Last Applause), an ode to veteran singers of tango directed by German Kral.